Unemployment decreased 10,600 (-1.6%) to 639,400. The number of persons looking for full-time work decreased 15,700 to 467,200 and the number of persons looking for part-time work increased 5,100 to 172,100.

Aggregate monthly hours worked decreased 1.0 million hours (-0.1%) to 1,535.6 million hours.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE

Release Date

January 2010

11 February 2010

February 2010

11 March 2010

March 2010

8 April 2010

April 2010

13 May 2010

May 2010

10 June 2010

June 2010

8 July 2010

CHANGES THIS MONTH

The re-instatement of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) sample is complete. The sample was introduced over a four month period, commencing in September 2009. Detailed information about the sample reinstatement is available in Information Paper: Labour force Survey Sample Design, Nov 2007 (Third edition) (cat. no. 6269.0).

SAMPLING ERROR

The estimates in this publication are based on a sample survey. Therefore, published estimates and the movements derived from them are subject to sampling variability. Standard errors give a measure of this variability, see pages 33 and 34. The interval bounded by two standard errors is the 95% confidence interval, which provides a way of looking at the variability inherent in estimates. This represents a 95% chance that the true value of the estimate lies within that interval.

Movements in seasonally adjusted series between November 2009 and December 2009

Monthly change

95% Confidence interval

Total Employment

35 200

-17 800

to

88 200

Total Unemployment

-10 600

-41 600

to

20 400

Unemployment rate

-0.1 pts

-0.3 pts

to

0.1 pts

Participation rate

0.0 pts

-0.4 pts

to

0.4 pts

INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070, email client.services@abs.gov.au or Steve Wood on Canberra (02) 6252 6525, email labourforce@abs.gov.au.

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